I love cable

I love cable. I love cable too much and I think we need to get rid of it. I reached this conclusion last night while watching the "Keeping up with the Kardashians." For those of you that have lives and don't know anything about this family, Kim Kardashian is famous for being friends with Paris Hilton and having an extremely, um, shapely derriere. Naturally someone decided those were good reasons to give she and her family a reality show. Prior to the Kardashian family saga I was engaged in another gripping reality show called "Doctor 90210" which details the plastic surgery adventures of people that live in Beverly Hills and probably have emotional issues. All in all I spent two and half hours last night watching reality tv. I am so embarrassed by this I felt I should share it with all of you. Seriously, no wonder I don't have time to exercise.

Next, because it's not possible to write a whole post about reality television (unless you are way, way more pathetic than I am), I'll tell you a funny story about what happened on my flight from Las Vegas to Denver. I flew home on United so of course the flight was delayed. We had to wait for a plane to land and everyone to deplane before we'd start boarding. So waiting, waiting and I notice about five police officers mulling around. I was sort of hoping for some drama so I would have a good story. Naturally my thought was that someone on the flight about the land was intoxicated and belligerent. Eventually the plane landed and everyone started to deplane. At this point I didn't see the officers and was waiting for someone to be escorted off, I don't know, screaming and making scene in handcuffs maybe.


After many, many long minutes it was clear that the plane was empty and the officers were gone. Oh well, no drama or funny story to share. That was ok.

My friend and I got in line to board and then walked down the hall to the cabin. Standing right outside the cabin door were four police officers. Under ideal circumstances I am nervous flier. Having four uniformed police officers greet me as I got on the plane did not help matters.

I said exactly that to one of them and he laughed and told me he was making sure that no one was leaving Las Vegas with any money. I looked at him quizzically and wondered if he really thought I was stupid enough to believe him. The line was moving slowly but eventually I got onto the plane, looked over and lo and behold if OJ Simpson wasn't sitting there. Since my power of observation is very keen I said loudly "Hey! It's OJ Simpson!" He sort of smiled at me. Then, in case there were people in the back that didn't hear me I said it again. Seriously, I was just really surprised.

He was friendly to all the people that approached him (I don't really think I blew his cover). He didn't murder, assault or rob anyone on the flight. He seemed well-behaved. I did wonder why the hell he was flying coach but reached the conclusion that he probably has no money left for first class. I found out later that he was arraigned that day in Las Vegas and that our flight continued on to Miami where he lives.

I was musing over the presence of the officers with my dad and mom and my mom suggested there were there to stop people from mobbing him for his autograph. My dad thought that he wouldn't mind that and that the officers were there to protect him from angry mobs. Who knows?

So in the end I didn't have a belligerent drunk person story but I think the story I got is, in a way, even better.

Holy crap

Has it really two and a half weeks since I last wrote? I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. I've been so busy I'm not even sure where to begin. Also I left my camera at home so I can't post any of the dozens of pictures I took.

I guess I'll first say that I had a great, great time with my friend Susy. I was a little nervous that we wouldn't get along since it's been almost five years since we last saw each other. As it turns out it was like we hadn't spent a day apart. I don't know how many other people have a friend like that but I certainly feel blessed that I do. She and Kent also hit it off and we had a great time together while he was in town. Since we had a guest we did stuff that we normally don't take the time to do. We went up to Fort Collins and did two brewery tours, one at O'Dells and one at New Belgium. I preferred the O'Dells tour, mainly because we didn't have to wait. At New Belgium we cooled our heels for 45 minutes before we got our beer. (Hey, I have priorities.)

Thanksgiving was also nice, we had 15 people at dinner. The cooking for 15 isn't that much more than for 7 but the clean-up is sure a pain. Plus, we had some of my mom's family in town and their contribution is to sit and eat the food and watch everyone else clean up. As you can imagine, it's extremely helpful. Susy had never been to Thanksgiving before and I thought it was great she got to enjoy my favorite holiday with us.

Susy and I went to Las Vegas on the Monday after Thanksgiving and stayed at the Paris. It was pretty nice but after this trip I'm not eager to go to Las Vegas again. Once you've seen one casino on the strip, you've pretty much seen them all. Our first night we met up with my friend Hanna and had dinner (thanks again Hanna, it was awesome!). The second night we went down to Fremont Street for the light show. My dad also instructed us to see the newly renovated pool at the Golden Nugget. It's definitely cool, with a huge aquarium in the middle. However I felt the experience was somewhat marred by the vast number of scary drunk people walking around and at times following us. At one point I dragged Susy into Binyon's Horseshoe because I thought someone was following us. I asked a police officer for assistance but by then the smelly old drunk was gone. We didn't stay much longer after that since we didn't feel like gambling anymore.

Those are the main highlights of the last few weeks, plus a lot of good time with my family. On a side note, my brother is in trouble yet again. He relapsed about six months ago and as a result back serving time that he'd been on probation for. I hope that he'll be able to get and stay clean but my faith is somewhat broken.

I hope to have some pictures up this week of my trip.

Weee!

Or rather Wii. We decided to join the 21st century and buy and up-to-date gaming system. The last video game I played was the classic Nintendo and the last one Kent played was Sega. To say we're a little behind the times is an understatement. A Wii, for those of you that don't know, has a wireless controller that interacts with a sensor you put on the top of your TV. Wii is really cool for sports games because instead of just pushing buttons you actually use the remote as, say a tennis racket or a javelin.

The Wii also connects to the internet and you can download the classic Nintendo games. This is my favorite, FAVORITE thing. I used to love all the old Mario games but when my Nintendo died there was no way to play them. Now, I just connect Wii to my internet connection and voila for $5 I can download my favorite classic games.

I will have to say goodbye to Wii (and Kent) tomorrow though because I leave for my visit home. I'm really excited to get back and see everyone but I hate to be away from Kent and the animals for so long. Of course, Kent will be home for the actual holiday but then he has to leave again. And naturally I'm really excited to see my friend Susy. We're going to take a quick trip out to Las Vegas. Susy's been to America a number of times but hasn't seen much besides Colorado and Las Vegas is a really easy trip to make. I just had to promise not to gamble away our life savings. I think I can handle that.

Oops

I can't believe I haven't posted in a week. I'm not sure why since it hasn't been very busy. Maybe it's because I haven't had anything to write about. Lucky for you though something funny happened the other day that illustrated, once again, that San Antonio and Denver are not the same city. *Haha*

I left for work the other morning and according to my car the outside temperature was 64 degrees. For 7:30 AM in November this seemed pretty pleasant. When I arrived at work, what was the security guard wearing?

Why, a parka and ski cap! Of course! I shouldn't laugh those because most Coloradans would be completely useless here in July. But still, I laughed about it all day.

Am I getting old?

The past few weekends we've been getting together with guys that Kent has class with. We've had them over to our house and made them play Cranium with us. We love Cranium but you can't play without at least three people and then one person has to float between teams. Anyway, onto the point of my story. One of the guys is 18 and one is 21. They had to answer a question about the band Nirvana. They'd never heard of them. I normally wouldn't say "the band Nirvana" because until two weeks ago I'd never encountered anyone who didn't know about them. I almost made them sleep on the porch.


Am I really getting so old that people only seven years younger than me don't know about Nirvana? I am finding it harder to remember peoples' names and I've noticed that I no longer remember multiples of seven unless I use my fingers. Am I so old that one of the most important bands of the 1990s is no longer relevent? This is how I feel about that:

To work or not to work?

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to going back to school for my Master's degree in counseling. Being a military spouse has made me very impassioned for solider rights. The war itself is another long, angry blog but I'd like to counsel soliders with post traumatic stress disorder and their families. However I am feeling a little conflicted. Even though we're still a few years out from having kids Kent and I both agree that one parent staying home is extremely important. This alone probably isn't that conflicting as many parent, especially mothers, stay home for a few years while their kids are young and return to work when their kids start school.

My issue is that I have no plans on sending my kids to school. I just reread that sentence and it sounds sort of funny. I mean that ideally I want to home school our kids. There are a lot of home schoolers that do so for religious reasons but that's not my issue at all. My reasoning is actually pretty straight-forward. I don't think public education does a very good job and I think oftentimes learning becomes drudgery instead of fun. I think kids are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD because kids aren't meant to sit at a desk for six hours a day.

Anyway, so this is where my conflict stems. On one hand I want to get the education I feel passionate about for myself. But if I get that education will it go to waste? Will I regret not pursuing a career so I can take care of my family? Too bad I can't be split in two. Then I could satisfy both parts of me.

The best birthday ever

I'm not anywhere near my birthday. But I was thinking the other day about one of the best gifts I ever received. First though I have to give you some back story.

At the time of my birthday I had a crazy, huge crush on a boy named Josh that lived up the street from me. I was not alone, I believe at any one time he had five or six girls swooning over him. In retrospect I'm not sure why. He wasn't particularly cute, smart or funny. I digress. Anyway, Josh didn't like me. I think, at best, he had a tolerance for me. He knew I liked him (high school girls can't keep secrets) and it was inevitable that he was around me occasionally as we had a few mutual friends.

I was out of town on my 17th birthday (which is itself a whole story) and thus did not get to celebrate with my friends. I have a summer birthday and this seemed very unfair to me. However, I had sweet friends that didn't forget my birthday and wanted to do something special. Upon my return they gave me a few gifts. I'll be honest, I only remember one thing they gave me but it was awesome, especially for a 17 year-old with a serious crush. Are you ready?

Ready?

It was a videotape.

My friends Lisa and Kelly gave me a videotape and insisted I had to watch it right away. So I popped it in and started watching. I don't remember everything but part of the video involved them driving around with their windshield wipers on and no rain (we thought this was hysterial) and them getting my friends to wish me a happy birthday. The best, BEST part though was at the end. The camera view changed to night vision and there was a view of a house. I don't remember all the details but it basically involved them crawling around Josh's front yard. I think they made him say HI and HAPPY BIRTHDAY too, which made it pretty much the best gift ever.

So that's the story of the best gift ever. I outgrew my crush and Josh and his family moved away. Lisa, Kelly and I all went off to college and Lisa and I got married. No one has ever given me a gift like that again though. I still have the tape but alas, no longer a VCR. Maybe VHS will make a comeback though.